Paula Abdul on American Idol gaffe: "I got lost in my notes"

Paula Abdul insists she just got confused on Tuesday's American Idol when she critiqued two songs by contestant Jason Castro when he had only sung one.

Despite rumors she was drunk on the show, Paula blamed the gaffe on a change in judging.

For the first time in the 7-year history of the show, Idol judges were asked to wait to critique contestants until all five had performed, as opposed to each contestant getting feedback as soon as they've finished their song.

Abdul said she first heard about the change when the show went live.

"I go, 'We have never had to do this before ... Oh my God, what do we do?'" she told Ryan Seacrest during an interview on his KIIS FM radio show Wednesday.

"We were freaking out," Abdul added. "I said, 'We're gonna need paper and a pen to make sure we remember what we saw'."

When it was time to give Castro her feedback, she said, "I started looking at what I'm writing... I was reading the critique of what I was writing for Jason Castro...."

On the same page: Her notes for contestant David Cook, which she thought were for a second song Castro had performed.

"I got lost in my notes, and that is as simple as it was," she said. "It's so confusing.

"We were all discombobulated," she added. "It was just crazy, that's all.

"In seven years we’ve never had to do that. We were only following directions."